The Trump administration announced Monday night it will be reinstating a citizenship question to the decennial census in 2020, prompting threats of lawsuits by prominent Democrats. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra separately announced they will file respective lawsuits to stop the citizenship question from being asked during the census. Holder’s statement called the move by the Trump administration a “direct attack on our representative democracy.” Becerra called the decision, “illegal.” The Commerce Department, which oversees the census, issued a statement announcing the decision: Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that a question...

"...we come to celebrate and give thanks for the remarkable life of J. William Fulbright, a life that changed our country and our world forever, and for the better. In the work he did, the words he spoke and the life he lived, Bill Fulbright stood against the 20th century's most destructive forces and fought to advance its brightest hopes."

ABC, NBC, and CBS refuse to cover him. Left-leaning sources report on him with no integrity. PR tactics get employed at the hearing. And the DOJ spokesperson lashes out. The testimony of Christopher Coates before the United States Civil Rights Commission exposed a pervasive hostility to equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, as well as racialist policies at the Justice Department. He also exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of the defenders of the dismissal of the New Black Panther case. The testimony was covered by CNN and the Los Angeles Times, and was on the front page, above the fold,...

Observers of this week’s confirmation hearings for the post of U.S. attorney general might think it odd to see Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., rewind the clock to a single voter fraud case from the 1980s. Under persistent questioning, Sessions has had to defend his decision to prosecute a case of brazen voter fraud—something that was his job to do. The repeated references to this case by some senators represent just how far the civil rights industry has swerved from its honorable roots to derail a confirmation. Character assassination, false testimony, performance protests aimed at securing retweets instead of reconciliation, and...

Justice Department officials are warning that they will be dispatching fewer specially trained election observers this year as a result of a Supreme Court opinion that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The reduction is likely to diminish the department’s ability to detect voter intimidation and other potential problems at the polls. It comes as more than a dozen states have adopted new voting and registration rules, and as Republican candidate Donald Trump warns without evidence that the Nov. 8 election will be rigged and exhorts his followers to be vigilant against unspecified fraud. “It’s cause for...

AUSTIN, Texas – A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Texas' strict voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and ordered changes before the November election. ADVERTISEMENT The ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructs a lower court to make changes that fix the "discriminatory effect" of the 2011 law, but to do so in a way that disrupts this year's election season as little as possible. President Barack Obama's administration took the unusual step of deploying the weight of the U.S. Justice Department into the case when it challenged the law, which requires Texas residents...

Texas’s voter ID law violates federal laws prohibiting electoral discrimination, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 2011 state law, widely viewed as the one of the nation’s strictest such requirements, ruling that it violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. "The record shows that drafters and proponents of SB 14 were aware of the likely disproportionate effect of the law on minorities, and that they nonetheless passed the bill without adopting a number of proposed ameliorative measures that might have lessened this impact," Judge Catharina Haynes wrote in the ruling.

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a group that says it champions citizen interests, is a lead organizer of Democracy Awakening. Weissman told Breitbart News in an interview on Tuesday that the Awakening movement’s specific plans for “direct action” are not yet finalized, but he said it will include civil disobedience and activists risking arrest. This Presidential election will be the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. States with the worst histories of discrimination are pushing for new barriers to block the young, the poor, the elderly and minority voters from the ballot...

Hours-long waits for some Arizona residents wanting to vote in the presidential primary have led to accusations of voter suppression from Democrats and civil rights proponents who cite a decision by elections officials to slash the number of polling places this year. Residents in metro Phoenix have been bristling for years over a perception that state leaders want to make it harder for them to vote, and the mess at the polls Tuesday only heightened their frustration. Republican lawmakers passed a series of measures in recent years aimed at cracking down on voter fraud, but opponents believe the changes were...

We try to stay out of the muck here on the Spectacle Blog, but it’s Friday, and this one was too outrageous to ignore. MSNBC contributor Michael Eric Dyson made a comment yesterday that should have fueled mass outrage. After Clarence Thomas voted with the majority to strike down the section of the Voting Rights Act requiring certain jurisdictions to receive pre-clearance before making any changes to voting laws, Dyson said of Thomas: “A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”

Every American has the right to make his or her voice heard. Sadly, 50 years after the passage of the nation’s most important voting law, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, millions of Americans continue to be silenced at the voting booth because of a deadly one-two punch to our democracy – attacks on voting rights and an explosion of unlimited political spending in our elections.

President Obama will call for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary Thursday, the White House said. Obama will hold a teleconference to commemorate the landmark legislation and call for its renewal, following a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that voided one of its central provisions. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who rose to prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights leader, will participate. The event will allow Obama to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans, many of whom argue some provisions of the 1965 law went too far. It will take...

Video at link. Reps John Lewis and Linda Sanchez deserve the littlest fiddle award. House Republican leaders are slamming the brakes on voting rights legislation, insisting that any movement on the issue go through a key Republican committee chairman who opposes the proposal. House Democrats are pressing hard on GOP leaders to bring the new voter protections directly to the floor. That would sidestep consideration in the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has rejected a bipartisan proposal to update the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a...

Contrary to the assertions of many, voter fraud is not a myth. It is a stark reality that exists nationwide, from the rural counties of Georgia to the urban centers of New York. The Heritage Foundation has documented nearly 250 cases where nefarious citizens, officials, candidates and campaign operatives conspired to commit vote fraud, compromising the integrity of our elections to achieve their ideological goals. That list is just a tiny sampling of voter fraud, and it keeps growing. In May, the Heritage Foundation highlighted several recent cases. Here are some of the egregious new additions to the voter fraud...

Gee, how time flies when you’re having fun. Election time again! But isn’t it always? You who follow these columns may recall that a couple of weeks ago I fearlessly predicted that Hillary would win the 2016 presidential election. Do I think she is the best qualified candidate? Of course not. But her ace in the hole — voter fraud! Oh, I’m not talking about handing out fruit jars of moonshine, as was the custom here in Tennessee and in my native state of Virginia. The “revenooers” pretty well put them out of business and the hooch runners had to...

Last year, House Democrats saw ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a possible (if ultimately disappointing) ally in the fight to rewrite the Voting Rights Act for the 21st century. On Tuesday, Cantor’s leadership successor, Kevin McCarthy, might have revealed himself as another important potential friend to the effort. The California Republican echoed at a pen-and-pad briefing what fellow GOP lawmakers have said before: Any revision of the landmark 1965 law has to start in the Judiciary Committee — a disappointing answer for advocates who know Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., is disinclined to tackle the matter. But McCarthy later said...

Democrats have rolled out a proposal that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013. The bill, introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would establish a new formula to determine which state and local governments are required to get approval before changing their voting laws. Under the legislation, states that have a "record of racial discrimination" within the past 25 years would need federal approval to change their voting laws, according to a fact sheet from Leahy's office. The proposal would also allow...

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner has introduced legislation which would have the effect of placing all of Virginia’s election laws under Justice Department oversight, and Virginia isn’t the only state that would fall into federal election receivership. Sensenbrenner’s bill, H.R. 885, is co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and multiple members of the Congressional Black Caucus. It revives federal control through the Voting Rights Act over every state election law change. In 2013, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County vs. Holder decision struck down this power as an outdated and unconstitutional relic from a half-century ago. Texas would also fall under immediate federal...